With only their legs to carry them,
no goods but the gold of their gaze,
along the path of adventure,
they walk looking wild and tattered.
 
The wise man, angered, harangues them;
the idiot pities these dubious fools,
the children poke out their tongues
and the girls make fun of them.
 
That's because they're odious and laughable,
and indeed malevolent,
and they seem, in the hours of twilight,
to be somebody's bad dream.
 
It's because, on their shrill guitars
tensing their freedom-loving hands,
they drone out chants that are weird,
nostalgic and rebellious.
 
And because deep in their eyes
there laughs and weeps - tiresomely -
the love of eternal things,
of men long dead and of the ancient gods!
 
- So off you go, unceasing vagabonds,
wander, tragic and accursed,
along the ravines and the beaches
under the closed eyes of paradises!
 
Nature joins with man
to punish in appropriate ways
the arrogant melancholy
that makes you walk tall,
 
and, avenging on you the blasphemy
of your vast and vehement hopes,
bruises your doomed foreheads
with the rude shock of the elements.
 
Junes burn and Decembers freeze
your flesh to the bones,
and fevers invade your limbs,
which are torn by the reeds where you walk.
 
Everything repels, everything saddens you
and when death comes, skinny and cold,
to take you, your corpses then
will be scorned by the wolves!